It's funny that the gay rights movement is only about 40 years old, but they expect change already. Obama coming out in politician-support of them helped a lot, but they have to realize that they're fighting a long battle. Generations of women fought for the equal rights movement and it finally happened for them after 100-some years (I think 110 years?). Generations of blacks fought for the civil rights movement before it finally happened, some 130 years later.

40 years is nothing compared to that. I support equal rights, but I also advocate patience. Let people get accustomed to the idea and be patient. People don't change overnight - acceptance is a generational thing.

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

bldavis wrote:i love how this is the LGBT discussion thread and here we are discussing fries

Getting off topic in the AA? Say it ain't so...

@Klaud: I agree about the ketchup, but I was focusing solely on fries. Condiments alter the list a bit. And by themself, I don't particularly care for DQ fries. With gravy? Heck yeah.

Fivelives wrote:It's funny that the gay rights movement is only about 40 years old, but they expect change already. Obama coming out in politician-support of them helped a lot, but they have to realize that they're fighting a long battle. Generations of women fought for the equal rights movement and it finally happened for them after 100-some years (I think 110 years?). Generations of blacks fought for the civil rights movement before it finally happened, some 130 years later.

40 years is nothing compared to that. I support equal rights, but I also advocate patience. Let people get accustomed to the idea and be patient. People don't change overnight - acceptance is a generational thing.

You're saying that people fighting for women's/black's rights weren't expecting immediate change at the time? Just because it took that long in the past, doesn't mean we wouldn't like to speed up that process for the future.

Once you identify something as being wrong, it should not take 130 years, or 40 years, to fix it just because other things took that long. Do you wait 130 years to change a flat tire?

Here in New Zealand, we have not gone as far as granting homosexual marriage, but it is possible to have a "Civil Union" which has the exact same legal standing as a marriage and differs only in that when you start talking about same sex "marriage" you upset all the religious nuts. Which in itself is rather odd, considering we don't take religion very seriously down here. In the last census, a sufficient portion of New Zealanders wrote in "Jedi" as their religion to qualify it as a state-recognised religion, if it in fact existed.

But I digress. Religious nuts get all bent out of shape when you tell them which parts of their holy books are valid and which aren't. They reckon that's for them to decide, not the government. The fact that most of the things God once said were no-nos have since been okayed is conveniently ignored. You can actually order a cheeseburger on the sabbath without immediately exploding into flame, believe it or not.

We aren't talking about a flat tire. We're talking about how people are perceived, which is an entirely different beast.

You can force change on people, sure. But that never works in the long run - all it does is breed resentment and hatred. What you have to do is to educate people and let them change on their own, at their own pace. That takes time and patience. Just because we've grown used to having things exactly when and how we want them doesn't mean that everything is going to be available exactly when we want it, or even how we want it.

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

We're talking about the right of people who love eachother to make a lifelong committment acknowledged by the state. I don't give a rat's ass how long rednecks and fanatics are going to be butthurt over it. Every moment that two people can't enjoy what my wife and I have is a moment too long.

I don't care what Jethro thinks about it. If he's against gay marriage then he should marry a chick.

Dan Cathy wrote:“very much supportive of the family - the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”

I really have trouble understanding how anyone, that isn't completely ignorant, can try to justify this kind of thinking. Not only is he attacking the rights of two people to love each other but suggesting divorce and single mothers are somehow evil. It's harder to read this as anything other than hatred. Society changes but these people just keep on living with their heads buried in the sand, and even donate money to groups that keep piling that sand on.

Koatanga wrote:Once you identify something as being wrong, it should not take 130 years, or 40 years, to fix it just because other things took that long. Do you wait 130 years to change a flat tire?

This. And in this day and age with how quickly we can share information the process shouldn't take as long. The Civil rights movement didn't take 130 years, the persecution of african americans lasted that long, longer actually, in the US but the civil rights movement didn't. The persecution of people who are LGBT has been going on in this country just as long. It seems completely reasonable that there has been enough patience and things need to start changing, and they have, it's just people like Dan Cathy and poptart that are keeping the federal government where it's at.

Let them continue to be prejudiced against LGBT just as people continue to be racist but that shouldn't be keeping the federal government from granting basic rights that every other person enjoys.

Soon we will have same sex marriage too (commons vote coming soon). To put things into perspective, the conservative party and the editor of the biggest conservative blog site in the UK now support it. This was *unthinkable* 10 years ago. The only holdouts are religious loonies, angry at their increasing irrelevance and dwindling influence over politics.

Generally people are won over when same sex adoption, civil unions etc. become legal as it normalises LGBT people. With each little step in law, acceptance goes up and homophobia becomes less and less acceptable. Some people will take their prejudices to the grave with them and there is nothing you can do for such people and as such they are not worth worrying about. They are not a good reason to delay equal rights.

The biggest thing that America needs to push it forward is a good marketing campaign aimed at the religious explaining why they should support the rights, even if they don't support "the people".

You aren't going to change their minds about religion, and you shouldn't try. 3+ billion people in the world subscribe to a religion that identifies it as a "sin", and that doesn't even count the people who don't subscribe to a religion who have a problem with it, or underdeveloped parts of the world.

What you need to do, is get people to understand that by preserving the rights of those they don't agree with, you are actually preserving their rights as well. My parents are still involved in a church (thankfully not the same that I grew up in), and their current "big deal" is that in some countries it is illegal to be a practicing Christian (or at least that is what the spin is, I haven't investigated myself).

The way that I was finally able to have a rational discussion with my parents, was to get them to realize that currently, the LGBT community is in the same spot that they feel these christians in other countries are in. They are denied rights, they are denied equal and fair treatment under the law. Once I got them to see it that way, I was able to bring them around to talking about the idea that by preserving LGBT rights, you are in fact preserving their own rights. Everyone should have the right to the life that they choose within the law. IF it isn't illegal to be gay, it shouldn't be illegal to be "married".

While it's a stretch, and I know my parents still aren't 100% on board, they can at least have intelligent conversations with me now, something that we couldn't have even as recently as 3 years ago.

Get the Religious to see that preserving someone else's rights will in the long run serve to preserve their own, and you make progress.

Shoju wrote:and their current "big deal" is that in some countries it is illegal to be a practicing Christian (or at least that is what the spin is, I haven't investigated myself).

Intriguing, just looked into it. It would seem there is a list of 51 countries where it is illeagal to be a christian floating about. Further investigation shows it is perfectly legal to be a Christian in these countries but Christians are a minority and in some of them suffer all the shit minorities have to put up with.

The closest I could find to it actually being true is in some islamic countries it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity and the punishments vary from country to country ranging from a weary shrug to the death penalty.

Shoju wrote:The biggest thing that America needs to push it forward is a good marketing campaign aimed at the religious explaining why they should support the rights, even if they don't support "the people".

Same-sex marriage was recently legalized in Maryland but it won't start until January. In November there will be a ballot item trying to block the law going into effect. This pisses me off to know end. I don't think civil rights matters should ever be open to majority vote. I'm making my fiance get his ass registered to vote this weekend. I don't care what else he does but the vote is projected to be close and we need every person we can get.

For myself, I won't eat at Chick Fillete. I would likewise boycott anyone else who was so openly funding something I was against this strongly. There aren't many others that I know of and I am not sure if that is a reflection of the state of things or my ignorance. As an individual I only have so much power but I do have the availability to put my money where my mouth is.

In planning our wedding I have also only used gay-friendly vendors. There haven't been many that I looked at who weren't but it's still something that I checked.

Shoju wrote:and their current "big deal" is that in some countries it is illegal to be a practicing Christian (or at least that is what the spin is, I haven't investigated myself).

Intriguing, just looked into it. It would seem there is a list of 51 countries where it is illeagal to be a christian floating about. Further investigation shows it is perfectly legal to be a Christian in these countries but Christians are a minority and in some of them suffer all the shit minorities have to put up with.

The closest I could find to it actually being true is in some islamic countries it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity and the punishments vary from country to country ranging from a weary shrug to the death penalty.

If you really want to discuss that, instead of dismissing it, I'll dig up details.

What you fail to mention is that in many of those countries, like China, if you don't go to the "state" church, you are subject to being put in jail at their whim. Or in Indonesia, where it's perfectly legal, but the local islamic mob is likely to come around and burn your church, your house, and chop your family to bits.

Or you could talk about several countries in central west africa, where it's basically a religious civil war.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

another example (albeit a bit extreme) would be something that happened in the USin Missouri in the 1830s (i think, might be the 40s) there a governer's order for the extermination of mormonsiow, you could be killed for even being thought of as a mormon, or living in a mormon town

LGBT can at least live in peace (most places)

Brekkie:Tanks are like shitty DPS. And healers are like REALLY distracted DPSAmirya:Why yes, your penis is longer than his because you hit 30k dps in the first 10 seconds. But guess what? That raid boss has a dick bigger than your ego. Flex:I don't make mistakes. I execute carefully planned strategic group wipes.Levie:(in /g) It's weird, I have a collar and I dont know where I got it from, Worgen are kinky!Levie:Drunk Lev goes and does what he pleases just to annoy sober Lev.Sagara:You see, you need to *spread* the bun before you insert the hot dog.

Shoju wrote:and their current "big deal" is that in some countries it is illegal to be a practicing Christian (or at least that is what the spin is, I haven't investigated myself).

Intriguing, just looked into it. It would seem there is a list of 51 countries where it is illeagal to be a christian floating about. Further investigation shows it is perfectly legal to be a Christian in these countries but Christians are a minority and in some of them suffer all the shit minorities have to put up with.

The closest I could find to it actually being true is in some islamic countries it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity and the punishments vary from country to country ranging from a weary shrug to the death penalty.

If you really want to discuss that, instead of dismissing it, I'll dig up details.

What you fail to mention is that in many of those countries, like China, if you don't go to the "state" church, you are subject to being put in jail at their whim. Or in Indonesia, where it's perfectly legal, but the local islamic mob is likely to come around and burn your church, your house, and chop your family to bits.

Or you could talk about several countries in central west africa, where it's basically a religious civil war.

And that's even better. With pastor's going out and saying that they should round up the gays and put them in prison camps, and that they should beat their children for being gay. Yes. truly. This is the type of problem that Christianity is faced with, and the reason that churches, and parishioners need to take a step back, and realize that their opinions about the gay community are bordering on the same type of opinions that they are in a tizzy about in other countries.

If you worry about your christian brother around the world who is dealing with hardships, yet agree with people voicing their desire to impose those same hardships on people in your own country, there is a problem.

It's not the people of our generation that you have to change. It's the same people who call us every time their VCR clock is flashing 12:00, or who try to pass stupid laws saying that video game violence causes real life violence, or any number of stupid decisions.

Those are the people whose viewpoints need to change. We joke about the old people that sit on their lawns with rock salt-loaded shotguns shouting "GET ORF MY LAWN" here on this forum, but those are the people who are overwhelmingly against gay marriage. They're the most likely to be religious, conservative, and any number of other labels that add up to one thing: against LGBT rights.

And pretty much everything from the time the emancipation proclamation was signed into law until the end of segregation is the civil rights battle.

Lasting change takes time, in any area you can think of. In cases of public opinion, that means we're talking in generational terms. Be patient, it'll happen.

- I'm not Jesus, but I can turn water into Kool-Aid.- A Sergeant in motion outranks an officer who doesn't know what the hell is going on.- A demolitions specialist at a flat run outranks everybody.

Shoju wrote:And that's even better. With pastor's going out and saying that they should round up the gays and put them in prison camps, and that they should beat their children for being gay. Yes. truly. This is the type of problem that Christianity is faced with, and the reason that churches, and parishioners need to take a step back, and realize that their opinions about the gay community are bordering on the same type of opinions that they are in a tizzy about in other countries.

If you worry about your christian brother around the world who is dealing with hardships, yet agree with people voicing their desire to impose those same hardships on people in your own country, there is a problem.

While I completely agree with your argument and think it makes total logical sense I don't see it going very far. To these people they're following the one true religion while gay people are an abomination who will spend eternity burning in hell. Most people who are against gay marriage for religious reasons aren't going to empathize with gays because gays are wrong and they're right.

Shoju wrote:And that's even better. With pastor's going out and saying that they should round up the gays and put them in prison camps, and that they should beat their children for being gay. Yes. truly. This is the type of problem that Christianity is faced with, and the reason that churches, and parishioners need to take a step back, and realize that their opinions about the gay community are bordering on the same type of opinions that they are in a tizzy about in other countries.

If you worry about your christian brother around the world who is dealing with hardships, yet agree with people voicing their desire to impose those same hardships on people in your own country, there is a problem.

While I completely agree with your argument and think it makes total logical sense I don't see it going very far. To these people they're following the one true religion while gay people are an abomination who will spend eternity burning in hell. Most people who are against gay marriage for religious reasons aren't going to empathize with gays because gays are wrong and they're right.

Logic isn't going to breach that wall. I wish it would though.

And as we have seen from several members here, Gays are right, and anyone who follows religion is some sort of mouth breathing idiot worthy of scathing criticism. It goes both ways.